Fire In The Blood

Chapter Three

  I MOVED TOWARD her but Escott stopped me. His face was drawn and his lips had thinned to the point of disappearance.

  "Mind where you step," he said in a low, carefully level voice.

  He wasn't trying to be funny; he looked as sick as I felt. I nodded and took my time getting to Kitty. She'd just missed hitting the mess from McAlister's throat. I scooped her up and Escott followed as I took her out and put her on the oversized bed in the back.

  "Still wearing her coat," he murmured. "She must have walked straight in and found him. "

  "I'm glad you don't think she did it. "

  "Of course, she could have knocked him out first and then killed him as he lay helpless. The physical evidence is against that theory, though. Except for this"-he removed one of her shoes and examined the smear of blood on its sole-"she is quite clean. The killer would most certainly have at least a spot or two on his hands. "

  He sounded pretty clinical until I realized that the cold detachment was his way of being able to handle the whole horrible business. He was still pasty white and his fingers twitched with more than his usual nervous energy.

  "I have to make some phone calls. If she comes round, keep her back here and don't touch anything that will hold a print. " He carefully placed the shoe on the nightstand. Almost as an afterthought, he swiped his gloved fingers over the drawer handle, and left.

  Her skin was clammy and blue at the edges. I pulled the bedspread up and tucked it around her slight body. There seemed no point in reviving her; she'd be awake all too soon and have lots of talking to do for the cops. She was still out when Escott returned a few minutes later.

  "Our employer is not at home and no one knows where he is. I should have liked to have given him some warning about this, but it can't be helped now, the police are on their way. I rousted the manager of this place. She's downstairs waiting to let them in. "

  "You call Lieutenant Blair?"

  "Yes. He'll be thorough, which means you might not wish to be here. If this ends up in court. . . "

  "I'll stick around. Tell him that I was waiting out in the car while you followed the girl inside. They won't call me into court if I wasn't here to see anything. "

  "And your presence now?"

  "I got tired of waiting and followed you in-after you found the body. The only problem is Kitty, she saw us both. "

  He hardly glanced at her. "I doubt that she will be in a condition to remember, but if so, then it is something you can remedy easily enough. Now, before Blair shows up I want to check things again. "

  McAlister's looks hadn't improved while we were gone. Escott picked his way around the kitchen as though the pool of blood were pan of a mine field. He'd once mentioned that he suffered from squeamishness; apparently it was under control tonight. I couldn't bring myself to go in, and hung back in the dining room, out of the way.

  "Seepage rather than splashing," he said to himself in a voice that sounded borrowed. "He must have already been dead for this one. " He indicated the blade in McAlister's throat.

  "What about his stuff?" My own voice was thin.

  He surveyed the scattered debris from the turned-out pockets. , "His wallet-if he carried one-is missing. Perhaps we are meant to think the motive was robbery. "

  "Maybe it was, but for the bracelet. "

  "Which is not here, unless it's under him, and I've no wish to move him and see.

  Only we and Mr. Pierce know of it as being a possible motive for this terrible thing, yet these multiple wounds indicate. . . " He squatted on his heels, staring hard at them.

  What?"

  He shook his head. He would talk when he was ready. He stood, casting around for something else to study, fastening his eye on the stove and a heavy iron frying pan there. Instead of sitting square on a burner, it was tilted half-on and -off. Escott peered at it closely, keeping his hands well clear. Is that what smashed his head?" I asked.

  "I believe so. It more than qualifies as a blunt instrument and is the only likely object in the room. " What about his blackjack?"

  "Yes, there's that, but I really don't see him as cheerfully handing it over for his killer to use. Also this was done very quickly. We weren't more than ten minutes behind Miss Donovan, and McAlister was less than five minutes ahead of her. "

  "So the killer must have been waiting here for him. "

  "Unless Miss Donovan is the killer. "

  "But you said-"

  "I know. It is most unlikely, given her actions to aid him at the Boswell House, but it is just possible. " You don't really think. . . " lie shrugged. "All permutations must be equally considered, especially the unsavory ones. Perhaps you can settle things one way or another when she comes round. "

  "You can make book on it. " Yes, that's another factor to consider," he mused.

  What?"

  "Leadfoot Sam, the bookie. "

  He quit the kitchen and I led the way back to her bedroom. The bed was empty, its spread tossed aside. The shoe on the nightstand was gone. A corner window with access to the fire escape was wide open and the thin curtains over it seemed to shiver from the icy air drifting inside. We both darted over, but she was nowhere in sight.

  Escott allowed himself a brief and entirely American-sounding obscenity. "She'll make for her car. "

  "I'll go find out. "

  He didn't argue. To save time, I vanished on the spot and hurled out the window, using the uncompromising metal grid-work of the stairs as a guide to the ground.

  Re-forming, I heard a motor kick over and rushed around the building in time to see her taillights flare and dim as she took a sharp corner out of the apartment parking lot.

  My car was on the other side of the place, of course. I was halfway there when the first of the cops rolled up and stopped. I waved at him in a friendly, hurried way, but he wasn't buying any. He'd been called to the scene of a homicide and spotted a man running away; it was more than enough to inspire his hunter's instinct. He was out and shouting for me to stop.

  I didn't know if he had his gun in hand or not and had no inclination to find out.

  Quickly swerving under the deep shadow of a couple of trees, I vanished again, and kept going. He was still beating the bush when I bumped against my car and slipped inside. I was feeling pretty smug as I started up the engine. The feeling lasted until a prowl car roared in from nowhere and screeched to a halt right in my path. The first cop ran up, half crouching so he could see inside the driver's window. He did indeed have his gun in hand and it was pointed right at my chest. I decided not to move.

  He bellowed at me to get out and I obliged. While he and his friends went through the farce of slapping me down and putting on the cuffs, Kitty Donovan speeded merrily away into the night. I might have eventually been able to hypnotize my way out of it, but there were too many strikes against that gambit. The three of them were distracted and hostile, it was too dark for them to see me very well, but most of all I was just too dust-spitting mad to talk coherently.

  A couple of unmarked cars rolled up and a medium-tall man in a belted leather overcoat emerged from one of them. We hadn't seen each other in several months, but I knew him right away. A young forty and dandy handsome, Lieutenant Blair was one of the best-dressed cops in Chicago, if not the rest of the state. He walked up slowly, studying things, and especially me. A broad smile of recognition appeared under his carefully groomed mustache.

  "What have you got here?" he asked, addressing the cop who had a proprietary hand on my shoulder.

  "Caught him running away, Lieutenant. " The cop briefly described my capture.

  "Uh-huh. Why were you running away, Mr. Fleming?"

  "I was chasing someone. "

  "And who were you chasing?"

  I didn't know how far Escott wanted to go in protecting his client's privacy.

  "Better ask Charles about that, I only came along for the ride. "

  Last
fall, in order to avert a problem, I'd hypnotized Blair, planting the idea in his mind that we were friends. It had worked very well, but by now time and circumstances had eroded my suggestion down to almost nothing. Blair wasn't a bit amused with me.

  "If you'd like to go for another ride, I'm sure we can arrange it. "

  The cop took a firmer grip on me as though to follow through with the threat, and that's when Escott made what I can only describe as a timely entrance. There were some smudges of grime on his clothes, indicating he'd also used the fire escape to exit the building. He was only slightly breathless, enough to give the impression that he was in a hurry.

  "Lieutenant Blair, thank you for coming so quickly. " He shook hands with Blair and at the same time got him walking back toward the apartments. He immediately launched into a succinct outline of his version of the evening, keeping me safely in the background until the last. Somehow he managed to avoid mentioning Pierce's name or how we broke into Kitty's flat.

  ". . . when we saw that she'd escaped out the window. Jack naturally went after her," he concluded.

  "Naturally," he agreed, his tone bordering on sarcasm. "And just why did the young lady go out the window?"

  "She was probably frightened out of her wits. "

  "Where would she go?"

  Escott shrugged minimally, using one hand and an eyebrow.

  As our parade reached the entry doors and the lights on either side of them, Blair noticed the souvenir Escott sported from McAlister's blackjack. "You been in a war or something?"

  "Only a small skirmish, hardly worth the resulting headache. "

  Escott's offhand and deprecatory manner amused Blair long enough for him to have the cop release me. He had more important things to do than to push around the hired help. By the time we turned to go into the building his mood had gone sour again. It spread to the rest of the group, with the exception of the middle-aged woman in a bathrobe who let us in. For her, it was a toss-up between terror and curiosity. Murder can do that to people.

  The next couple of hours were spent sitting on Kitty Donovan's overstuffed sofa watching a parade of cops turn the place over. Her neat little life was twisted inside out as they took photographs, dusted for prints, and collected anything that could be remotely connected with Stan McAlister's death.

  Things wound their way down and the number of investigators thinned and left.

  Without ceremony or stir, McAlister was carried out in a stained and creaking wicker basket. Escott watched, his face carefully blank. One of his hands rested on the power switch of a table lamp next to his chair and he idly flicked it on and off until one of the cops told him to cut it out. He stiffened a little, not from the cop's annoyed order, but from some internal start. His pale gray eyes fixed on me, but he had no chance to say anything. Blair came over and started asking questions again, the kind Escott couldn't answer. I'd once been on the receiving end of one of Blair's interrogations and knew Escott's reticence would not be welcome.

  A description of Kitty Donovan and her vehicle had been issued so the prowl-car boys could get in on the hunt. Blair hadn't made it any too clear whether he wanted her as a witness or a suspect. He'd listened to everything we could tell him, but had reserved judgment on our conclusions.

  With the passage of time and the scarcity of facts, Blair's patience lessened in direct proportion to his growing temper. His olive skin got a few shades paler and his dark eyes were bright from all the internal heat. Push him too far and he'd explode.

  Escott didn't look very worried about it.

  Blair abruptly stopped the questions when a muscle in his jaw started working all on its own. I thought the volcano would go off then and there, but he still had it well in check. His voice was smooth, almost purring. "Very well, Charles, I can admire your business ethics, but it's getting late and I've other work to do. I may need to call you in for more questions at any time, though, so I want you to hang around the station just in case anything new occurs to either of us. "

  "Are you charging me with anything?"

  "Don't tempt me. "

  Escott had been carefully neutral since Blair's arrival and continued to hold on to it. He nodded, ruefully accepting Blair's terms, and I wondered what he was up to since he was fully capable of talking his way out of the situation. "Would you like to have my assistant accompany us?" he inquired politely.

  "No, I would not. Your assistant can just get the hell out of here. "

  One corner of Escott's mouth twitched. Blair missed it or he might have reconsidered his snap decision. "Very well," he said, with only a hint of exasperation.

  "Jack, I was wondering if you'd look after my car before going home. I wouldn't want any pranksters bashing in the lights. " He handed me the keys.

  "Yeah, sure. "

  One of the plainclothesmen hustled him out.

  "What's this about his car?" asked Blair.

  "Nothing, Lieutenant," I said. "We had to leave it in a rough neighborhood, is all. "

  "Near the Boswell House, by any chance?"

  "Yeah. What about it?"

  "Just stay away from the place. My men are going over it now and you could get swept up and taken in along with anything else they find over there. "

  I shrugged, all innocence. "They won't even see me. . . I promise. "

  Escott had parked his Nash under the doubtful safety of a street lamp a little distance from the hotel. No one had bothered it; the weather might have been too discouragingly cold for anybody to try. I checked inside and found his notebook in the glove box, opening it to the last page. The paper with all the information on McAlister dropped out. Maybe that was what he wanted picked up, but I wasn't so sure. I put it in my own notebook and took a look at his lights, front and back. The whisper of city dust on them was undisturbed, so he hadn't left any hidden messages under the glass.

  Half a block down were three cars too new for the area. One was a black-and-white, another unmarked with a tall aerial, and the third a slick-looking Cadillac. I sat in the Nash and waited until the cops finally came out, and drove away.

  The driver waiting in the Caddy stayed put, but I wasn't much worried about him, figuring his employer was busy visiting some girlfriend. The street was dead quiet when I got out and walked across to the hotel.

  The manager was awake again and had thrown on some clothes. He stood at the front desk narrowly watching a tall woman using his phone. Maybe he thought she'd walk off with it.

  "Ten cents," he said when she finished.

  "A nickel or nothing," she snapped.

  "That's a business line. While you're calling for a cab, I could be losing money. "

  "Like hell. " She dug into her handbag and stuck a cigarette in her freshly painted mouth. I stepped in and lighted it for her. She glanced up and nodded a brief thanks.

  The last time I'd seen her she'd slammed a door on me. Her eyes had lost a lot of their hardness and were puffy and red. She'd tried to disguise the lines with a layer of powder and almost succeeded. Her carroty hair was covered by a close-fitting black hat and she'd replaced the kimono with a dark dress and coat. The stuff looked expensive, but slightly shabby with age or a lot of wear. At her feet was a large suitcase.

  "Moving out?" I asked.

  "What's it to you?"

  "Ten cents," repeated the manager. He concentrated on her, ignoring me because he didn't remember our earlier encounter at all. The suggestions I'd planted earlier were still strong in him. I fished out two nickels and tossed them on the desk.

  "Hey," said the woman. "Don't do me any favors. "

  "Life's too short to spend time arguing, besides, I want to talk with you. "

  "Hey!" she protested as I took her elbow and steered her away from the desk. "I don't want to talk to you. Lemme go or I'll call a cop. "

  "You're too late, they just left. "

  She stopped fighting me, suddenly curious. "Who the hell are you
, anyway?"

  "A friend of a friend of Stan McAlister. "

  The name meant something to her but she pretended it didn't. "Who?"

  "Your next-door neighbor. "

  "That lug. Well, he ain't my neighbor anymore. He ain't no-body's neighbor now.

  The cops-the cops said-" She broke off with an involuntary shudder.

  "Yeah, I heard what happened to him. " 'You a cop, too?" she demanded.

  "No, I'm here for a friend of a friend. Remember? Why are you in such a hurry to leave?"

  "That's my business. Why are you so damn nosy?"

  "Because Stan got himself and my friend into some deep trouble tonight. "

  "I'd have never guessed with all the cops around. "

  "Are they why you're leaving?"

  "So what if it is? I don't like cops, it ain't a crime. Look it up. "

  "I believe you. Look, I'm only trying to dig out some information on Stan. "

  Her hard eyes lowered in sulky thought. "What kind of information?"

  "What people he saw, how he made his living, that kind. "

  She shook her head. "I can't help you. "

  "Not even for some extra cab fare?"

  "I don't know nothing worth that much. A place like this, it don't pay to get curious about anything. "

  I could believe that. "You ever talk to him in the hall?"

  She almost laughed. "He talked to me. "

  "What about?"

  She looked at me pityingly. "What do you think? Mugs like that are always on the make, but I wasn't interested. "

  "He have a girlfriend?"

  "Yeah, there's always some noodle-brain around who'll fall for his kind of line. "

  "So he brought 'em here?"

  She nodded and drew heavily on her cigarette, affecting boredom, but I could almost smell the fear rolling off her.

  "You see any of them?"

  "I'm not the housemother here. "

  "He have any other kind of visitors?"

  Her eyes were less hard now than tired. "I already told all this to one of those goddamn cops. I don't know nothing, which means I can't say nothing. You want to know about the guy, ask the management. "

  "I will, but you're better looking. "

  She put on a thin, disillusioned smile. "Nice try, kid. Maybe some other time. "

  "Hold on-"

  "I can't, my cab just pulled up. "

  "You hear of anyone called Leadfoot Sam?"

  A little noise came out of her throat and she shook her head. She was plenty scared. "Please, I just wanta get out of here. "

  "I'll walk you out. "

  Her mouth dropped a little, but she was grateful for the release. I carried her heavy suitcase and put it in the trunk for her.

  "Where will you go?" I asked, holding the door as she climbed in behind the driver.

  "Anyplace where I can get an unbroken night's sleep. Hey, you don't have to do that. "

  I passed a five to her and shut the door. "Yeah, I know. "

  She rolled down her window. "You nuts or something?"

  "Probably. Sweet dreams. "

  Her mouth worked and her teeth started chattering from more than just the winter air. She rolled the window up and the cab drove away. I waited till it made the corner then went back inside.

  "What's her name?" I asked the manager.

  "She's too old for you, sonny," he leered.

  I quickly decided that manners and charm would be a total waste on him. Since there were no witnesses around now, I opted for my usual shortcut, and had him talking like a mynah bird in a very few minutes.

  The guy said the woman's name was Doreen Grey and that she called herself an actress. A lot of girls called themselves actresses. I shrugged and passed it off. Life was tough all over. I skipped her and asked about McAlister and got some answers.

  He'd moved in about six months ago and paid his rent on time, usually putting in a little extra on the side. He did the kind of entertaining that the management was content to ignore as long as the tips were good. He had a lot of different lady friends; Kitty had been only one in a long parade.

  I told him to catch up on his sleep and went to McAlister's room to see what the cops had left. It was about the same as before, but with the drawers pulled open. The bed looked dirty and depressing. I didn't like to think of Kitty ever being in it.

  Perhaps their assignations took place in her own room. The supplies stored in her nightstand lent some hopeful credence to that.

  Escott's apparently idle play with the table lamp came to mind. I turned on the one overhead, once again wincing at the brightness. Two more lamps flanked the bed. I checked them over but found nothing odd. They were as cheap as the rest of the furnishings and had no hidden crannies for concealing expensive bracelets. They even worked. Their combined brightness made the dingy little room even more depressing. I shut them off and stared at the walls, trying to figure out what Escott had seen.

  . Across from the bed was the bureau and its mirror. As I ran an eye from one wall to the other, I noticed the crummy prints hung up for decoration. They had been left a little crooked on their wires by the cops; I'd been careful to leave them straight.

  They served to remind me that the mirror had been bolted to the wall. It was about the only thing in the place that might have been worth stealing. Because mirrors give me the creeps, I'd pretty much ignored it before, with my eyes purposely not focusing on its reflection of an empty room. I crossed over for another look. At each corner a bright new screw held the mirror's frame fast in place.

  I gave one edge a tug and the whole thing snapped free with a sloppy crunch. The mirror was a fancy one-way job to hide a hole in the wall. The hole went right through the lath and plaster to Doreen Grey's room.

  And I'd given her cab fare.

  After indulging in a quarter-minute of intense self-recrimination, I put the mirror down and slipped through the wall to look around. Doreen's room was an appropriate reverse of McAlister's, except the bureau had been pushed over a few feet. There were three faint dents in the bare floor beneath the hole, probably where she'd set up the tripod. Normal room light wouldn't have been sufficient for her photography, but she'd seen to that by giving McAlister some extra-bright bulbs to leave on during the show. They'd had a nasty little racket going, either tor blackmail or pornography, but I could admire the planning involved.

  None of it was any too good for Kitty. If McAlister had tried putting the squeeze on her, she'd have plenty of motive for killing him. She was a little doll, cute and demure looking as you please, but I was beginning to have serious doubts-the kind that send people to death row.

  I shook out of them and finished searching the room.

  Doreen hadn't missed a thing. Her wastebasket held wads of soggy tissues, indicating she'd suffered a bout of genuine grief for her partner's demise, but the rest of the place was clean. I speculated that both she and McAlister had lived ready to pull stakes and leave on a moment's notice. With the kind of business they'd worked, it would have been a necessity.

  She could be on her way to Timbuktu by now and only the cops had the resources to find her-unless I got smart and called the cab company.

  I went downstairs and borrowed the business phone. It was getting late and things were slowing down. They didn't have much trouble finding the driver who'd just picked up a fare from the Boswell House address. He showed up again about five minutes after my call and I went outside to meet him.

  "Where to?" he asked when I got in.

  "Noplace. "

  He threw a suspicious glance up to the mirror, missed me, and turned around.

  "What's the scam, then?"

  "The woman you picked up here, where'd you take her?"

  He hesitated.

  "My intentions are honorable," I said, and pulled out a couple bucks for him to see, as if money could indicate a man's honesty.


  He shrugged. It wasn't his business. He gave out with a street name and some general directions on how he got there.

  "This another hotel?" I asked.

  "Nan. It's a rough patch like this, stores and things. She paid me and stood in the street till I drove off. "

  "No hotels, apartments, stuff like that?"

  "Nope. "

  "Were any of the stores open?"

  "Nan. There was a bar doing business down on the far corner, but it looked like a lot of walking for her to do with that suitcase. She didn't want any help with it, I'm glad to say. That thing looked fifty pounds if it was an ounce, and my back's bad enough. "

  "Here, get yourself some liniment. " I gave him the two bucks in lieu of a regular fare and got out. He shook his head, but grinned as he left. Crazy customers like me were always welcome. The exhaust had hardly settled when I heard the thunk of a car door as it slammed shut just up the street. A big bald guy stood next to the Cadillac I'd noticed earlier. He smoothed down the vast lines of his overcoat and started walking toward me.

  He seemed harmless enough, at least at a distance. I was alone and not too worried about being able to take care of myself. As he drew near I started having second thoughts.

  He was closer to being seven feet tall than six, with a massive, muscled body under the coat. He wasn't naturally bald, but shaved his head. He carried his hat in hand and swung it up in place as he came closer. I settled my own more firmly so it wouldn't fall off as I looked up at him. He stopped about a yard away and regarded me with a calm, confident eye.

  "I want you should come with me," he said in an even, unhurried voice. He could have said something about the weather and it would have sounded the same.

  A dozen smart-ass answers to that one popped into mind and just as quickly died away. He wasn't a cop, because I never heard of a cop driving a Cadillac. That left two other possibilities and I didn't think he was some kind of overgrown hustler.

  "You work for Leadfoot Sam?" I asked.

  He smiled, not showing his teeth, which was a relief. As it was, he was more than enough to scare Boris Karloff, let alone a solitary vampire.

  "I hope it's not a formal occasion," I said, walking with him back to the Caddy.

  He didn't bother to enlighten me as he held open the rear door. I climbed in, sitting behind a gum-chewing driver who looked only mildly interested in what was going on. Sleepy eyed, he put it in gear and we rolled away as soon as the big guy had settled in.

  It did occur to me early on that I could have turned down the invitation. I wanted to chase after Doreen Grey and get the details about her racket with McAlister. On the other hand, Lead-foot was another source of information, and he was going out of his way to make himself available. His method was unorthodox, but for the moment not too threatening.

  The drive was short; we stopped at an all-night drugstore less than a mile away.

  My escorts took me around to the back entrance, used a key, and walked me in. We stood in a cluttered storage and pickup area, full of crates and all kinds of bottles.

  "That you, Butler?" a man called from farther in and down.

  "Yeah, Sam," answered the big guy, ducking as he came through the door. He carefully shut and locked it. The driver hung back and Butler urged me in the direction of a rusty spiral staircase.

  I wasn't too sure the steps would hold our combined weight. They protested a little, but not alarmingly so as we trudged down to a dry, dusty room stacked with more crates. A metal-shaded bulb hung low over a table that must have been assembled from pieces, since it was too big for the stairway opening. A long, weedy man in his late thirties lounged in a chair at the far end with his feet up on it. He wore two-tone shoes, plaid pants, and a flowered vest. He wasn't following a fashion so much as trying to set one of his own.

  Off to one side, he'd placed a straw hat, brim up, and was tossing cards at it with tremendous concentration. We had to wait until he'd finished out the deck. When the cards were used up, he stared at the hat with regret, then turned his attention to us. He had a narrow face, weak chin, and rather wide, innocent eyes. His brow furrowed, as though he were trying to remember something.

  "Who's that?" he asked Butler, staring at me with sincere puzzlement.

  "He was at McAlister's hotel. He put Doreen in a cab, goes into the hotel. I see lights come up in McAlister's room. The lights go out and he comes out. He calls a cab, but don't leave in it, just talks with the driver. I thought you should maybe want to talk to him, too. "

  "I'm Sam. Who're you?"

  "Leadfoot Sam?"

  He was a study in blank astonishment. "You can't be. I'm Leadfoot Sam. Butler, take this man away, he's an imposter. " Then he roared out with a room-filling laugh and Butler grinned.

  I didn't know whether to join them or bolt out before it got worse.

  "You're a killer, Sam," said Butler.

  "That's right. " Sam stopped laughing and stared at me meaningfully. "And don't anyone forget it. "

  If his game was to disconcert me, it was working. Lunatics always leave me unnerved.

  He pointed at a chair. "Sit. "

  I looked to make certain he wasn't talking to Butler and walked over to take the chair. It was a plain wooden job with a worn chintz pad on the seat that didn't seem to belong there. Sam was blank eyed again, so I lifted the pad to see what was under it. He was visibly disappointed when I tossed his hidden whoopee cushion onto the table.

  "Get us something to drink," he told Butler.

  Butler located a crate and wrenched off the lid, nails and all. He pulled out a flat bottle of booze and set it down between us. Sam unscrewed the cap to let it breathe.

  "No glasses. " he apologized. "But this stuff should kill off most anything catching. " He offered me the first swig.

  The last time I'd swallowed something other than blood, I'd ended up heaving it into a gutter. Once again, I was trapped by the demands of social ritual.

  He misinterpreted my hesitation and took a quick drink to show that it was all right. I accepted the bottle, put it to my lips, and held my tongue over the opening, pretending to drink. The drop of booze I did taste was bitter and burned.

  "Is it that bad?" He really seemed concerned.

  "I'm not used to the good stuff," I hedged.

  He laughed, a single barking explosion. "Good stuff! Sonny, this is what we had left over after Roosevelt made it legal again. It's been sitting down here for-Butler, how long has it been sitting down here?"

  "A long time, Sam. "

  "A long time. "

  I tried to look impressed. "You use to run this yourself?"

  "I don't remember the cargos so much as the driving. It was a goddamn long haul from Canada to here, and you wouldn't believe the hours. "

  "Gave you a good name at any rate. "

  "Yeah, it gave me a good name. Now what's yours?"

  I started to say Jack the Giant Killer and thought better of it, not being too sure of Butler's temper. I opted for my middle name and the name of my favorite radio hero. "Russell Lament. "

  "Pleased to meet you, Russell Lamont. " He took his feet off the table to lean over and shake hands. "You a cop?"

  "No. "

  " 'S'funny, 'cause I'm getting a cop smell off you. "

  I showed him an old press card and covered up the name with my thumb. "I'm a reporter. Is that close enough to cop to get the smells mixed?"

  He didn't like it, but was still too curious to throw me out. "How about telling me what your interest is in Sam McAlister?"

  "He's a friend of a friend. "

  Sam shook his head, his narrow shoulders slumped tragically. "Aw, that's not nice, Jack. You come down here, drink my booze, and then fib. Shame on you. "

  "That's the best I can do unless there's something in it for me. "

  "What'd'ya have in mind?"

  "Information on McAlister and Doreen Grey. "
>
  "Gonna write a big story and name names?"

  "Nah, I just want to help some kid out of a jam. "

  It was the truth, but he didn't want to believe it. "Ever think that you might be in a jam?" His eyes flicked to Butler, who was still looming somewhere in the back.

  "Nothing I can't handle. "

  That was a barrel of monkeys to both of them. I smiled, too, just to show them I was a good sport. I was still smiling when Butler appeared behind me, gripped the seat of the chair, and steadily lifted it and me to the ceiling.

  "You sure about what you can handle?" asked Sam.

  Butler bumped the chair up and down a few times so that my head brushed a ventilator conduit.

  I couldn't help but smile again. "You should rent him out to carnivals. He'd make a great ride. "

  Sam nodded once, Butler grunted acknowledgment, and without further ceremony, threw me and the chair across the room.